My tax-rant got me thinking as I walked home from my glorious comrade
Ivana's house. Got me thinking about how I'd change the system rather than abolish it.
This is a common temptation for Anarchists. The system is so entrenched, so all-pervasive in the minds of the general populace that you start thinking about leaving off the beating and starting with the joining.
I'm not bush enough to think my day-dreamy "reforms" would work. For starters, they're still so radical that most everyone would look at them as totally implausible. Hell, they'll piss of the majority of people who've gone and bought into the bootstrap myth of self-elevation.*
(*These people are usually in positions of entrenched power, not that they pulled themselves up by the boot straps mind, no no, they were born on a nice little mountain of money. But they believe in the myth even so...)
But even the implausibility of people taking up such a radical position (which is actually kinda moderate to my way of thinking) isn't what dooms it to failure.
Eventual failure is ensured by the fact that "reform" includes the continued existence of a State, and it is the natural progression of States to grow ever more authoritarian the longer they exist. The ways they choose to exercise that authority may change and vary, as well as the means of enforcement (these days its increasingly corporate powers that do the enforcing), but someone always comes along and perverts the original purpose to their own selfish ends, usually with the best of intentions. That's why I'm an Anarchist. That's why I oppose the State.
That being said, I'm still going to share my imaginary reforms. I feel like perverting the State to my own selfish interests.
Representational democracy rarely actually represents the will of the We the MotherFuckin' People. I mean, look at the bullshit the Minister of Industry just pulled, claiming that a binding resolution voted into effect
directly by the people is neither binding nor legal, simply because it clearly contradicts the agenda the ruling party decided on without any input from the majority of the population. Look at the sneaky, slippery, and questionably legal tactics the parties employed to prevent a national referendum, and hence the public getting a say, on Media Law a few years ago. Look at just how many things get shoved through that Parliamentary pit of vipers that the vast majority of Icelanders oppose, like signing up for the "Coalition of the Willing", sending armed men to Afghanistan, not to mention
The Weasle's latest proposal for an Icelandic Secret Service and Military (despite these things being blatantly unconstitutional as far as I can figure).
The last thing anyone in Parliament (and hence in one of the established political parties) wants is the people having any actual fucking say in anything without any meddling from the parties. I mean, people figure out they can govern themselves, and all the politicos are out of a job.
So for starters, let's get rid of the Parliament. A nation of less than 400,000 people has no real need for 60+ people who's soul job is to make new laws and tweak old ones. A nation doesn't really need that many laws to begin with. Not to mention that all laws ought to have an expiration date, because if they stay on the books, while new laws are piled on top of them year after year, you soon have a Byzantine maze of legal contradictions and outdated "crimes" that only a select few can decipher. This of course grants those select few an astounding level of power over those less knowledgeable, and the hierarchy just gets higher. Add to this the fact that Icelandic Parliamentarians are vastly over paid, and terribly prone to granting sweet-heart deals to the rich and powerful in the form of tax-breaks and privatization, and getting rid of Parliament would save the Icelandic taxpayers a
wad.
So what do we do without a Parliament?
We give legislative power back to its source: We The Motherfuckin' People. We hold a bi-annual vote on laws or reforms put forward by citizens, so long as they meet a couple of standards i.e. they are not blatantly unconstitutional and gain enough signatures in petition form. And we make good and damned sure that WTMFP take part in the process by making voting day not just a holiday, but a
fun holiday. Day off work. Rides and cotton candy. Concerts. All that good shit.
But that doesn't go far enough. See, even with legislative power devolved back to the people, if the State still exists, it needs someone to administer it.
That's where direct election of ministers comes in. Rather than having totally unqualified people appointed to run various aspects of the State based on the political whims of party leadership, we'd elect those that do the best job. What's more, we'd
ban political party membership for anyone running for a ministerial post. You want that power, you have to give up you party's power. You have to administer, rather than rule. That way doctors and health workers would run the Ministry of Health, environmental scientists would run the Ministry of Environment, and a goddamn
accountant would run the Ministry of Finance.
Implement some of my previously mentioned tax reforms, and we're well on our way.
But there's still a ton to do.
The Icelandic media and society are currently caught up in a storm of controversy over issues like drugs and the abuse thereof, homelessness/poverty, pediatric and adolescent mental health issues becoming almost epidemic, the repeated failures of the social and child-protective services, crime crime crime, and the current trend towards increased heavy industry.
Sadly, rather than looking at the one of the central causes of these inter-related problems, each is focused on as a separate issue. The answer to drug-crime is increased funding for police and harsher sentences for the "terrorists" that sell drugs. The answer to homelessness and poverty is to increase job opportunities and make sure that business is profitable so the wealth trickles down, all the kids with behaviour disorders will be saved by a bigger and better pediatric mental ward and increased numbers of counselors, who will also prevent further children and teens from falling through the cracks and into the hidden world of drug abuse, rape and prostitution that lies just beneath the civilized veneer of Icelandic life. Crime of course will be prevented with increased surveillance, more policemen, and harsher sentences in general along with more and bigger prisons. Despite the recent positive outcome in Hafnarfjörður, apparently heavy industry will be stopped by holding protest marches
after the fucking dam has been built.
All of which is treating the symptoms and not the disease.
The disease is fucking Capitalism folks. Simple as that.
Now, don't get me wrong. Eliminating Capitalism will not bring about a Utopian. There will
always be certain types of crime. Murder. Rape. Assault. All the "crimes of passion" will continue as long a people are passionate about stupid stuff. As long as there are differences between individuals there will be different standards of living. I'm not dumb enough to believe in perfection.
But a lot of of the negative trends in Icelandic society today can be traced back to certain fundamental changes in the society in the last two decades, namely the increasingly capitalist and laissez-faire trend in Icelandic politics.
As I've said before, Iceland used to be one of the most economically equitable societies in the world. The gap between the richest and the poorest was for the most part very very small. This is part of what makes stories about homelessness and poverty in Iceland so shocking to Icelanders. There isn't
supposed to be poverty in Iceland. Not anymore. Not since the bad old days before WWII.
But there is, and as the gap between the have-a-lots and the have-nots grows, so will problems like those mentioned above. There will be more crime because people who are convinced that they should have all the stuff that their richer neighbors have will steal more often. If they don't resort to theft, they'll deal drugs to get rich quick. If the rich are a society's heroes, then people will do what ever they can to be just as "heroic" as they can.
What's more, in a society where the average Joe and Jane are working they're asses off 50+ hours a week to keep up with the Jonhannsons, while they're kids are raised by underfunded institutions up until they're old enough to "take care of themselves" and wander around their formative years without much of any meaningful contact with Mom and Dad, is it any wonder that kids are increasingly fat, depressed, ill-behaved, prone to drug and alcohol use, and petty crime? They're raised by TV and the Internet, with plenty of visits from Uncle Video Game. They feed themselves on junk, 'cause mommy and daddy don't have the energy to cook. They hang out in front of shops 'cause they have nowhere else to go that doesn't preach at them. They steal to feel cool, tough, hard, and all those other things the media, and
especially their peers tell them they should be. They steal and fight and dope and drink to feel real, when life is basically the same old boring ennui. And the highest goal most of them can bring themselves to aspire to is to get a good job out of Uni and get "rich". Not help people. Not make the world a better place. Not follow a dream to travel, write, compose, sculpt. Not have a family and be happy. Nope.
"Get rich".
And it'll keep getting worse.
Don't believe me? Take a look at the US. Take a long hard look. And then decide if you want Iceland to wind up like that.
Take a long hard look at countries with relatively small income gaps and those with income canyons. The smaller the gap, as a rule, the higher the standard of living, the lower the rates of crime, the fewer the homeless, the less the drug abuse...get the point?
So what can we do about it? We can do our damnedest to narrow the gap back down and prevent it from widening again.
State-Socialism would seem to solve this problem nicely, but it don't. At least not often. Usually it just leaves everyone feeling hungry.
So I propose something totally different.
The Maximum Wage Law.
Yup. That's right. We have no trouble deciding on a minimum wage (should be renamed the "insufficient wage") so why not a maximum wage? Why not say you can make this much and anything over that amount gets redistributed? I mean, the minimum wage is set so low that its pretty much impossible to live off, so being good capitalists we could set the maximum wage (actually income) pretty fucking high. Enough so that people who are greedy and workaholic can still have something to strive for. But over that, it 100% tax.
Sounds crazy right? But think about it, if we fight against poverty because its a social blight, why not fight against excessive wealth? Its a blight as well, a sort of parasitic infection that causes all kinds of unpleasant symptoms. I mean, if poverty is starvation, excessive wealth is obesity.
And nobody thinks its healthy to be fat these days.
So far we've got direct demockrazy, elected (hopefully) politically neutral administrators, and the Maximum Wage Law to combat the high end of the income gap.
What's needed now is something to allow people to spend more time being people and less time being bankers and teachers and bus drivers and shop assistants and labourers and Increased Income Facilitators.
To solve this problem, you need to ask yourself a very simple question. "Why do we have to work so much?"
The answer turns out to be pretty fucking complex.
There's the labor shortage of course. Iceland increasing finds itself importing workers to do the work its booming economy demands, even while misguided morons prattle on about immigrants "stealing" jobs.
There's also the fact that we are paid for our time, and not so much for our work. I mean, you work in an office, you've got to enter such and such an amount of accounts, collate a dozen or so files, and that's all you really need to do that day. You finish up in 4 hours. Does this mean you get to take the rest of the day off? Nope. You are paid to be there, no matter how productive you are. There has been some research that shows that while Icelanders work one of the longest average work-weeks in the West, they are also among the least productive. I mean, why bust your ass when it means you'll just wind up sitting there all day with a thumb up your bum or, what's worse. you'll have something even worse dumped on you to do.
Of course, the main cause is rooted in one of the classic contradictions of Capitalism. Capitalism demands that all companies grow, constantly, lest they die in the market red of tooth and claw. This ignores the fact that constant exponential growth on a finite planet is a logical impossibility, but I digress.
My point is, the very economic success that Icelanders continually trumpet is in many ways the root cause of many of their social problems. When its all about increase, growth, and competition, things like family, nature, friendships, and personal-betterment tend to get flushed down the shitter.
So what's my genius solution for this problem?
Simple. Decide, as a nation, that parents spending 50+ hours away from their kids is not a good thing. Realize the obscenity of having 6 year old children being "at work", i.e. school and after-school care for 9,5 hours a day! Decide that we'd all be a lot happier if we could have a bit more time to be people and be with our people and a little less time being whatever our jobs define us as.
Reduce the work-day to 6 hours with no reduction of wages.
Hell, let the wages reduce. The less money people have to spend, the less the merchant class can charge. It'll balance out eventually.
Of course, no reduction in wages would mean that your healthier, happier population would have more time to spend their money on more services and recreation. Which would drive the economy onward. Not to mention the reduction in taxes. I mean, a happier, more well-rested, less stressed populace uses up less medical care than an overworked, stressed to the brink populace. There'd be less crime to investigate, prosecute, and punish. Less need for State funded child-care. Fewer car accidents from tired commuters trying to rush through their days.
Sound too good to be true, right? But oddly enough, its perfectly practical. The State has already mandated what counts as 100% work. That means it can change it. It won't, cause its in the thrall of narrow-minded profit-uber-alles thinking, but it could.
Imagine dropping your kid off at school at 9, going to work at ten, and picking them up to go home at three, while making the same money you make now? How could that possibly be bad for anyone other than the folks making obscene money (making the equivalent of 500 of your fellow countrymen's wages, while being taxed less than them, while people suffer from lack of food, housing, decent geriatric care, etc, is so obscene I'm tempted to call it
evil) of your back?
So that's it. My reforms for the lava-lump. They´ll be panned and ignored and never ever enacted, because too many people have a vested interest in the status quo, and even more people are both afraid of change and too guiltily defensive to admit to the problems that inspired this rant.
And before anyone starts accusing me of being "too negative" understand that I rant to try to get other people to think, and to act. My solutions may seem extreme and unlikely to you, but they come from a deep conviction that this island can and should be an even better place to live.
They come from my heartfelt belief that for one man to sit at a table groaning with food in his mansion while another sits in a dank and darkened basement and debates whether to eat his last slice of bread for breakfast or for dinner is pure, undeniable,
evil.
I'm tired of seeing something I love slowly destroy itself out of greed and apathy.
Bring it on you little anonymous bitches, bring it on.
